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Board of Directors

There are 15 members of the Board of Directors: six officers who make up the Executive Committee, six Elected Directors, and three Appointed Directors. All Directors serve at-large, and thus they represent the entire NPPA membership.

Elected Directors serve three-year terms. Appointed Directors serve at the pleasure of the President. The current Board structure was passed June 9, 2009, and took effect January 1st, 2010.

The President and Vice President are elected in January by the Board of Directors, and they serve one-year terms.

The Secretary and Treasurer are elected in January by the Board of Directors, and they serve two-year terms. The Secretary is elected in odd-numbered years, and the Treasurer is elected in even-numbered years.

The Regional Chairs Representative is elected in April by the Regional Leaders and serves a one-year term.

A Student Delegate is appointed annually by the Student Committee Chair for a one-year term, directly representing student members. The Board's standing rules currently affords the student delegate voting priveleges.

Carolyn Hall is a staff photojournalist at KING-TV in Seattle, specializing in general assignment storytelling. Before working at KING, she worked at KTUU in Anchorage, Alaska as a staff photojournalist, and as a producer and editor for the Boston Red Sox. She graduated from Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire in 2003.

Her work has been recognized numerous times by the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism Competition, the NPPA Television Quarterly Clip Contest, the Alaska Press Club and the Alaska Broadcasters Association. In 2011 she earned the TVQCC's NPPA West Regional Photographer of the Year, and in 2012 was honored with a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.

Carolyn is passionate about connecting a community through the power of emotional storytelling. It's those moments, big and small, she tries to find every day while documenting life and history in Western Washington. Carolyn is also the Central General Region Chair for the Television Quarterly Clip Contest.

Ross Taylor's professional’s recognitions include NPPA's Photographer of the Year, Northern Photographer of the Year, New England Photographer of the Year, Virginia Photographer of the Year and North Carolina Photographer of the Year (twice). His coverage of an Afghanistan trauma hospital garnered numerous international and national awards, and his work has also appeared on the cover of the Best of Photojournalism Magazine (twice).

Taylor is a visiting professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Previously, he was a visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the inaugural fellow in the Multimedia, Photography and Design Department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. Taylor’s master’s project was a series of films in the local burn unit.

Katie Schoolov is an award-winning video journalist for KPBS, the PBS and NPR affiliate in San Diego, California. She shoots and edits in-depth features for television, radio, and the web, reporting stories on her own when time allows. She is a San Diego native and returned to cover her hometown after working as a video journalist for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun, and previously for a daily newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Katie won a Golden Mike Award in 2015, has been nominated for three Emmy awards, and was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. She is passionate about public media, and about NPPA - which has shaped her career in incredibly helpful ways. When she's not behind a camera (or sometimes she still is), she loves to snowboard, scuba dive, go on long runs with her dog, and travel the world. She's seen 34 countries so far, but her best stories still come from her own hometown, and from just across the border in Mexico.

Alex Garcia is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago photographer - www.alexandergarcia.com - with over twenty years of experience in visual storytelling. HarperCollins calls him, "One of the World's Leading Photojournalists". He has worked for two of the biggest circulation newspapers in the country, photographing a diversity of people in many contexts - from CEO executive portraits to intimate moments of daily life. He specializes in creative on-location portraiture and documentary/lifestyle photography with a strong visual style and use of color. He has photographed, edited and produced multimedia and video pieces for various clients, able to scale up crews to meet the needs of clients and larger productions.

Garcia is currently an adjunct professor with the online program of the School of Visual Arts in New York, formerly serving as an adjunct lecturer at the Medill graduate school at Northwestern University. In addition, he has taught several workshops on creative location portraits, lighting techniques and personal vision.

(term expires 12/31/18)

Elected Board Member - Luanne Dietz

Luanne Dietz is a three-time Emmy Award winning visual storyteller at CNN Courageous. She has been a force in the creative industry bringing her expertise to newspapers, international documentaries, inner-city media education, non profit and film production. Her endeavors have taken her around the globe, including extended periods of time in Europe and the Middle East. As a photo editor and multimedia producer at the San Francisco Chronicle, Dietz lead a team in coverage of a World Series and a Superbowl within the same year. Following the Sandy Hook Shooting, Dietz was chosen to represent the Heart Corporation as a national photo editor in Newtown, Conn. Her editing work and film production have been recognized by Photographer of the Year international, the National Press Photographers Association and many others. Along with her professional career, Dietz shares her passion for visual storytelling with urban youth through her tech foundation, Cause Beautiful, which focuses on photography as a catalyst for social change. She is rarely seen without a smile on her face.

Danese Kenon is an award-winning multimedia photojournalist struggling with an addiction to salsa dancing. Her enthusiasm for picture taking as a seven-year-old evolved into a full-fledge love affair. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Virginia State University, she attended The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL as a Visual Fellow. This academic boot camp changed her perception of photojournalism. It was there that she learned visual journalism more than just 'pretty pictures.' – it also came with responsibility to convey and share the truth. In the fall of 2000, she was a Chips Quinn Scholar at The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, NY, and later became a full-time photographer with the paper. After three years in Rochester, NY, she attended the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University and received a Master of Science degree in Photography. A Pulliam Fellowship took Kenon to The Indianapolis Star, where she would spend the next eight years.

Kenon often teaches multimedia journalism to organizations like Chips Quinn Scholars, The Diversity Institute Scholars at the Freedom Forum and to the students of the National Association of Black Journalists. Currently, Danese Kenon is the Assistant Managing Editor of Visuals with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can follow her on twitter @danesekenon.

Matiash is the deputy multimedia editor for TIME magazine. In addition to editing content for TIME editorial, she also co-curates the magazine's official Instagram feed and contributes to their LightBox photography blog. Before joining TIME, Matiash was a picture editor for The Wall Street Journal, and she was also editor of Photo Journal, the newspaper's official photography blog. Before the The Wall Street Journal, Matiash was a picture editor and desk supervisor for The Associated Press. A graduate of the University of Miami, she was editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper, The Miami Hurricane, while studying visual journalism. Follow her on Twitter at @cmatiash.

Presidential Appointee - Brad Smith

Smith is the former director of photography for Time Inc.'s Sports Group, where he oversaw the photographic content of Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and Golf magazine in both print and digital platforms. Before that Smith spent 12 years at The New York Times as a sports picture editor, where he won multiple editing awards in Pictures of the Year International. During the administration of President William Jefferson Clinton, Smith was a picture editor and assistant director of photography for The White House photography department. He has also worked for the National Audubon Society and for the photography agency Sygma. Currently Smith is the founder of Brad Smith Creative, a visual consulting group, and he serves on the board of directors for the Eddie Adams Barnstorm Workshop and NYC SALT. And has also served as a faculty member for The Summit Workshops and FotoFusion. Follow him on Twitter at @NYBradSmith.

Student Delegate - Emily Selby

Emily Selby is a senior journalism student at the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She is President of the UGA NPPA Student Chapter and has served as chief photographer of the Red and Black, an independent student newspaper. Selby worked as a photographer for the Redcoat Marching Band at UGA in the fall of 2015, and will begin working as a photography intern for UGA Athletics beginning in 2016. Selby graduates college in May of 2016 and plans to pursue a photojournalism career upon graduation.